70 Virginis

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Transcript of 70 Virginis

70 VIRGINIS Location In the Galaxy: The star lies at the north central edge (13:28:25.8+13:46:43.6, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Virgo, the Virgin -- northeast of Vindemiatrix. Distince from Sol: It is located about 59.1 light-years from Sol. Appearance Size: The star has about 1.10 percent of Sol's mass, 2.0 to 2.5 times its diameter (Sol's 1,382,400 km.=864,000 miles) Appearance The sun-like 70 Virginis is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of spectral and luminosity type G5 Va. Type: classified from G2.5 to G4 star. 2.9 times Sol's luminosity. The star may be less enriched (92 percent) than Sol with elements heavier than hydrogen, based on its abundance of iron. 70 Virginis has a circumstellar dust disk generated by collisions between Kuiper-Belt type objects. PLANET: 70 Virginis b is the exoplanet that orbits around the star 70 Virginis. Virginis b It is believed that the star is only 29 Light Years away. It moves around 70 Virginis at an average distance of only 0.48 AUs in a highly elliptical orbit that takes almost 116-167 days to complete. Description As a result the planet's orbit was thought to be in the habitable zone and the planet was nicknamed Goldilocks The Hipparcos satellite later showed that the star was more distant and brighter resulting in the planet being too hot to be in the Goldilocks zone. Speculation (Virginis b with one of its moons.) 70 Virginis b is a giant planet. Has at least 7.4 times Jupiter's mass, with an upper mass limit of 38 Jupiter masses. Some of it's moons may be surpassing the size of Earth. Speculations There is a speculation that one of its Earth-like moons may have water The rotation of the speculated moon would be locked by the giant planet's tidal forces, so days and nights would have to last for several weeks. References http://www.solstation.com/stars2/70virgin.htm http://www.exoplaneten.de/70vir/english.html http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/70vir.html http://www.extrasolar.net/planet.asp?PlanetID=22 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worlds/planets.html